1. Field of the Invention
This invention is directed to a method of and apparatus for communicating via a network of computers, namely an electronic mail system wherein outgoing and incoming mail is categorized for added user friendliness.
2. Description of Related Art
The Internet has expanded the communications ability of a typical client/server environment wherein networked clients could communicate with each other. With the advent of the Internet, a typical home personal computer (PC) can communicate with another PC around the world without having to pay long distance telephone charges. Electronic mail (or e-mail) can be used to send messages to anyone who is connected to the Internet or to a computer network that has a connection to the Internet such as an online service.
E-mail software enables the user to read their e-mail after the Internet delivers the e-mail to the user's mail box, compose new mail, and respond to their messages. When someone sends an e-mail message via the Internet, the e-mail message is sent to a mail server wherein the e-mail software on the client computer logs in to see whether the user has any e-mail. When the user wants to read the e-mail message, the software downloads the message to the user's client computer where the user can read it, file it delete it, or respond to it.
Since the volume of e-mail has increased dramatically over the last few years, it is not uncommon to find tens or hundreds of e-mail messages waiting for the client user's response. The difficulty encountered by users nowadays has to do with managing the volume of e-mail being sent and received. In addition to legitimate e-mail from family, friends and colleagues, there is also junk e-mail known as “spam.” It is time consuming and tedious to have to review every e-mail message before finding the one of importance. Thus, it would be desirable to have a method and apparatus for categorizing the e-mail as it is being sent so that it may be categorized as it is received.
The typical e-mail software enables the user to create electronic storage sites to categorize and store e-mail that has been received. However, this method of storing the e-mail must be performed “manually” by the user after the e-mail software has downloaded the individual message onto the user's client computer. Upon reading the e-mail message, the user may store the message in an electronic folder in a category of their choosing for later reference.
Bearing in mind the problems and deficiencies of the prior art, it is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for categorizing e-mail messages as they are sent and received.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for sending and receiving electronic mail wherein the e-mail messages are categorized for added user friendliness.
A further object of the invention is to provide an electronic mail software for categorizing e-mail as it is sent and received.
Still other objects and advantages of the invention will in part be obvious and will in part be apparent from the specification.